“They may look back on it,” Brockers said Tuesday. “They may say they’re going to do something. But they’re not going to change any of the rules they passed. In the end, it’s still going to be the way it is.”

Which is to say quarterbacks will continue to be treated like snow darters and snow leopards. Maybe the World Wildlife Fund should replace its panda logo with a picture of Tom Brady, lying down and pointing, with a yellow flag nearby.

The NFL’s Week 4 begins Thursday night at the Coliseum, with the Vikings and Rams. Maybe it will be decided by a field goal. What if that field goal becomes 15 yards easier because a pass rusher forgets Jared Goff or Kirk Cousins is made of porcelain?

So far the league has called 34 roughing-the-QB penalties. In 17 weeks last year, the penalty was called 109 times. Twice Clay Matthews of the Packers has drawn a penalty that should be called Abuse of Gravity.

Let’s see. You can’t hit the quarterback high. You can’t low-bridge him. You have a “strike zone” between the neck and the knees, presumably. Don’t we have enough trouble with this in baseball?

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Put your feet in the size-17s of the typical pass rusher. He fights through blocks and chips and gets to the quarterback, reaping the reward for his own athletic ability and the coverage skills behind him. Now he has to sack the quarterback before he releases the ball, but he has to pick an area to do so, and once he brings him down he has to throw his body to the side somehow, as if he were dismounting from a pommel horse.

“You have to politely put him on the ground, I guess,” Brockers said. “Maybe give him a pillow, cover him up, tuck him in. Against the bigger guys, I guess you just have to wrap up his arms and keep him from throwing, and wait for the whistle.”

It is hard enough to apprehend Cam Newton (6-foot-5, 245) or Ben Roethlisberger (6-foot-5, 240) when no holds are barred.

Carson Wentz (6-foot-5, 237) and Nick Foles (6-foot-6, 243) run the RPO, the Run Pass Option, for the Eagles. They make those decisions at high speed, and yet the defenders have to stop and consult an instructional video before they hit.

Speaking of gravity, what happens when Newton falls on you? Does a flag follow an apple to the ground? Usually not.

But the first real victim is William Hayes, the ex-Ram who plays for Miami, or did before he tore his ACL on Sunday. He was in the process of sacking Oakland’s Derek Carr and, in deference to the weight-absorption rule, appeared to swing his body to the side. True, one can hurt one’s knee anywhere and anytime, even on a practice field with no one near, but Hayes was forced into an awkward, dangerous dance.

“That’s my guy,” Brockers said of Hayes. “But that’s what we have to think about. Do we stop short or do we go ahead with the play?

“You can’t think about it when you’re playing. And we practice it. The refs came to training camp and told us what they were going to emphasize. We’ve got dummies out there and we’re trying to step around them and twist and turn.”

More deeply, the QB protection racket emphasizes that player safety is not created equal. Eliminating the helmet-to-helmet stuff is crucial. Penalizing the pass rusher for doing his job is unfair.

“In this day and age, we care about injuries,” Brockers said. “Or we care about the high-dollar players being injured. There’s definitely a caste system as far as who gets protected and who doesn’t.

“But that’s where the money is. You score points, you get TV ratings. The best offensive weapon is the quarterback and when he’s not on the field, no points are being scored. So it’s a money thing.”

Scoring is up a point and a half per team per game, after it reached a seven-year low in 2017. But no team was more telegenic than the quarterback-hunting Chicago Bears of 1985, and no player more dynamic than Lawrence Taylor.

Any rule that changes the balance of a game should cause you to slap your palm against your forehead. Plus, you’d be honoring Deacon Jones, who, these days, would be ejected once he got off the bus.